[alife] Second CFP: Evolvability and Interaction Symposium

[Kerstin Dautenhahn]

Dear colleagues,

please distribute this CFP to researchers in your group who are interested 
in Evolvability and Interaction.

Thank you.

Kerstin Dautenhahn and Chrystopher Nehaniv

***SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION***

EPSRC Network on Evolvability in Biological and Software Systems

EVOLVABILITY and INTERACTION:

Evolutionary Substrates of Communication, Signaling, and
Perception in the Dynamics of Social Complexity

Sponsored by
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Queen Mary, University of London University of Hertfordshire, Adaptive 
Systems Research Group

Dates: October 8-10 (Wed, Thurs, Fri), 2003

Location: Robin Brook Centre, Queen Mary University of London, London, England

General Chair and Local Organizer:
Peter McOwan (Queen Mary, London, U.K.)

Program Chairs:
Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, U.K.)
Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, U.K.)

SCOPE OF SYMPOSIUM

The focus of this symposium is on the relationship between evolvability and 
interaction in biology, robotics and software systems. Evolvability is the 
capacity of populations to support heritable variability and differential 
success, as in organic, memetic or artifical evolutionary systems. 
Interaction between entities (large or small populations of cells, 
individuals, units of selection, social agents: animals, humans, robots, 
software) is the background for and is harnessed by evolutionary processes. 
This can result in adaptation to the presence of others via signalling and 
perception, communication, and exploiting the dynamics of social interaction.

In humans, other primates, dolphins, corvid, parrots, and other species 
interaction and social complexity have evolved that exploit mechanisms of 
recognition of particular individuals, life-long learning, autobiographical 
and interaction memory, development of social relationships, and complex 
forms of social learning and communication. Other animals exhibit 
interactive signaling systems (e.g. affect, threat and courtship displays), 
whereas within multicellular organisms and insect societies the substrates 
of interactions exploit chemical and stigmergic signals, or cell-type and 
caste roles.

This EPSRC symposium is part of series that follows upon the growing 
awareness from academia, industry, and research communities of the 
importance of evolvability, tentatively defined as, the capacity of 
populations to vary robustly and adaptively over time or generations in 
constructed and natural systems. The symposium aims to encourage a dialogue 
between various research workers in areas that might benefit from a 
possible common framework addressing interactive systems as well as 
evolvability concerns.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

-evolution of evolvability in populations of interacting individuals
-animal social complexity
-the behaviour of communicating and signaling
-affordances and ecologies of interaction
-animal social networks and kinds of social minds
-evolvability issues in computation and interaction
-evolution of cognition and interaction
-perception and recognition of others
-emergence of higher-level phenomena through interaction
-cultural evolution, social learning and imitation
-interaction among social robots
-swarm intelligence, self-organization and stigmergy
-minimal architectures for social robotics
-dynamics in robot-human interaction
-cognitive constraints and the evolution of social behaviour
-intersubjectivity and intention reading in interaction
-development of long-term interactive relationships
-interaction histories and autobiographic memory
-evolution of signaling and communication
-expression in interaction
-social grounding of referential behaviour and language
-Machiavellian Intelligence
-systems and dynamical approaches to evolvability and interaction
-predictive models of evolvability in social settings
-development and dynamics of interaction
-development and differentiation in evolving populations (differentiated 
multicellularity, social caste systems, etc.)
others

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

CONFIRMED:

Lars Chittka (School of Biological Sciences, Queen Mary, UK)
URL: http://www.biology.qmul.ac.uk/research/staff/chittka/chittka.htm
Title: Behind the Spirit of the Hive: complex interaction dynamics in 
social insects

Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of 
Hertfordshire, UK)
URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/
Title: Artificial Social Intelligence: The Case of Robot-Human Interaction 
Dynamics

Robin Dunbar (Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research 
Group, University of Liverpool, UK)
URL: http://www.liv.ac.uk/www/evolpsyc/rimd.htm
Title: Cultural evolution in a structured population

Dario Floreano, (Autonomous Systems Lab, EPFL, Switzerland)
URL: http://asl.epfl.ch/
Title: Evolutionary and physical properties of cooperation

Auke Jan Ijspeert, (Biologically-Inspired Robotics Group, EPFL, Switzerland)
URL: http://lslwww.epfl.ch/birg/ijspeert.html

Takashi Ikegami (Department of General Systems Sciences, University of 
Tokyo, Japan)
URL: http://sacral.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ikeg/

Richard E. Michod (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 
University of Arizona, USA)
URL: http://eebweb.arizona.edu/michod/

Yoshihiro Miyake (Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems 
Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
URL: http://www.myk.dis.titech.ac.jp/~miyake/miyake.htm
Title: Co-creation Process in Embodied Interaction

Chrystopher Nehaniv (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of 
Hertfordshire, UK)
URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/
Title: Evolvability in Biological and Artificial Systems

Irene Pepperberg (MIT & Brandeis University, USA)
URL: http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/

Guy Theraulaz (CNRS - Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III, France)
URL: http://cognition.ups-tlse.fr/_guy/guy.html

Tomio Watanabe (Faculty of Computer Science and System Engineering, Okayama 
Prefectural University, Japan)
URL: http://hint.cse.oka-pu.ac.jp/Tomio/index_e.html
Title: Embodied Interaction and Communication Technology Through the 
Development of E-COSMIC: Embodied Communication System for Mind Connection

and others to be confirmed.

FOLLOW UP PUBLICATION:

Publication of selected papers in the indexed journal Interaction Studies: 
Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 
(John Benjamins Publishers). Extended abstracts and abstracts of keynote 
lectures, contributed papers and posters will be published in a University 
of Hertfordshire technical report available at the meeting.

PARTICIPATION:

Participants who would like to present a paper or poster at the symposium 
should email the programme chairs (K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk, 
C.L.Nehaniv at herts.ac.uk). See below for format details.

There is no registration fee. Participation is open to researchers and 
post-graduate students working in relevant areas. Please send an email to 
the general chair Peter McOwan (pmco at dcs.qmul.ac.uk) if you would like to 
attend without submitting a poster or talk.

Partial or full support of reasonable expenses is available for members of 
the Evolvability network and also UK-based postgraduate students who are 
presenting a paper or poster. Please inquire via email to 
C.L.Nehaniv at herts.ac.uk.

SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTED TALKS AND POSTERS:

Please email plain text abstracts (please specify poster or talk). As a 
guideline, poster submissions should be around 1/2 page, submissions for 
talks can be up to five pages long.

Symposium URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/EN/EVOINTER.html

EPSRC Evolvability Network http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/EN/


-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn
Professor of Artificial Intelligence
Adaptive Systems Research Group
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/ASRG.html
The University of Hertfordshire, Department of Computer Science
College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, United Kingdom
URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd
E-mail: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk
Fax: +44-1707-284-303 Tel: +44-1707-284-333